Description:

Eudora Welty
American/Mississippi, 1909-2001
"Twenty Photographs"
20 toned gelatin silver prints laid on board (as issued)
negative creation dates 1930s - early 1940s, print date 1980, unsigned, pencil-numbered "70/75" on each mount, published by Palaemon Press Edition, Winston-Salem, NC, with the Mississippi Department of Archives and History, printed by Gib and Gil Ford, with original signed and numbered pamphlet, errata slip, publisher's prospectus and tissue guards, signed on page three of insert; in original clamshell cloth covered box.

Note: Throughout the 1930s and early 1940s, Eudora Welty created a body of work remarkable for her choice of subjects and ability to put them at ease. The images depict the everyday lives of Mississippians at the height of the Depression. In early 1936, Welty was featured in a one-woman show of forty-five photographs at Lugene Opticians in New York. That same summer, Welty published her first short story, "Death of a Traveling Salesman," and became a publicity agent, junior grade, for the WPA in Mississippi. Welty traveled throughout the state's backroads, small towns and rural areas to write articles about WPA projects for community weeklies, snapping pictures along the way. Although taking pictures was not part of her official WPA tasks, the experience helped chart Welty's literary life. She is quoted in 1989: "In snapping these pictures I was acting completely on my own, though I'm afraid it was on their time; they have nothing to do with the WPA. But the WPA gave me the chance to travel, to see widely and at close hand and really for the first time the nature of the place I'd been born into. And it gave me the blessing of showing me the real State of Mississippi, not the abstract state of the Depression."

This portfolio contains the following gelatin silver prints: 1. A Woman of the 'Thirties; 2. Old Midwife (Ida M'Toy); 3. Mother and Child; 4. Delegate; 5. Child on the Porch; 6. Preacher and Leaders of the Holiness Church; 7. Chopping in the Fields; 8. Tomato Packers' Recess; 9. Saturday Trip to Town; 10. Courthouse Town; 11. Saturday Strollers; 12. Store Front; 13. Side Show, State Fair; 14. Houseboat Family, Pearl River; 15. A House with Bottle Trees; 16. Ruins of Windsor; 17. Ghost River-Town; 18. Abandoned ‘Lunatic Asylum;' 19. Carrying Home the Ice; 20. Home by Dark.

Ref.: Frail, T.A. "Eudora Welty as Photographer." Smithsonian Magazine. Apr. 2009. www.smithsonianmag.com. Accessed Aug. 19, 2025; Scanlan, Laura Wolff. "Southern Exposure." Humanities. Jan./Feb. 2011. www.neh.gov. Accessed Aug. 19, 2025.

  • Dimensions: Images: 10 x 14 in. (25.4 x 35.6 cm.) to 14 x 11 in. (35.6 x 27.9 cm.), Overall Sheets: 20 x 16 in. (50.8 x 40.6 cm.), Clamshell Box: 21 x 16 3/4 x 2 1/8 in. (53.3 x 42.5 x 5.4 cm.)
  • Medium: 20 toned gelatin silver prints laid on board (as issued)
  • Condition: No signs of past restoration; slight marks and inconsistencies in images likely part of original negatives; some mounts have very light creases in corners, possibly inherent to process; clamshell box has very light surface dust.

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September 12, 2025 10:00 AM CDT
New Orleans, LA, US

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